PEACE-MAKER

In a period marked by climate change and environmental challenges, planting of trillions of trees worldwide is a visionary solution to combat the climate crisis. 

The planting of trillions of trees is a practical and essential strategy to mitigate climate change and secure a sustainable future for generations to come. 
The urgency of tree planting cannot be overstated. The rise in global temperatures, extreme weather events – like recurrent and more devastating super typhoons, massive flooding, vast forest fires – among others, all over the world are indeed clear indicators of our planet’s perilous state. 

In January 2020, the World Economic Forum launched a program to “grow, restore, and conserve one trillion trees around the world and in a bid to restore biodiversity and help fight climate change.” 

At the COP26 summit in Glasgow in November 2021, 110 world leaders pledged to end and reverse deforestation by 2030. The countries which signed the agreement reportedly cover some 85 percent of the world’s forests.

The US, UK, Germany, Norway, Netherlands, and several other donor-countries committed US$12 billion of public funds and US$7.2 billion of private funds to protect and restore forests throughout the world. 

We had been advocating a “Trillion Trees Program” in the Philippines and in the international community since our earlier years as Speaker of the House, as founding chairman of the International Conference of Asian Political Parties (ICAPP), as well as in the various international organizations which we are privileged to serve. 

As we have repeatedly mentioned in this column, we believe reforestation and tree farming, on the scale and intensity the planet needs, can and must become a significant jobs-creating economic stimulus for developing countries, if not all countries, that the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the regional banks, parliaments, political parties, and civil society should champion.

Massive tree planting can become a virtuous, indeed a forever, cycle of planting, cultivating, harvesting, processing timber, and replanting that can generate tens of millions of jobs worldwide for poor young men and young women in the emerging countries, apart from addressing food shortage and expanding upland agriculture, and especially, contributing in a most significant way in the battle against climate change and environmental degradation. 
We proposed much earlier that these programs can be organized through what we may call “Billions of Trees Foundations” managed by civil-society groupings, and strongly supported by governments, parliaments, and the political parties, or perhaps, even better, undertaken by governments themselves, and actively supported even managed by the private sector.   

In 1933, during the Great Depression, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt formed the Civilian Conservative Corps (CCC), composed of six million young jobless Americans, mostly from the East, which, in less than 10 years, built more than 800 parks and planted three billion trees nationwide.
Roosevelt put the then younger Douglas MacArthur, before he became the legendary World War II hero, in charge of the CCC—Civilian Conservative Corps—or Roosevelt’s Tree Army.

Planting trillions of trees worldwide is a gigantic undertaking that demands international cooperation and sustained effort. However, the benefits are vast, ranging from economic prosperity and improved quality of life. 

It is imperative that we embrace tree planting as a global mission, working together to restore our planet’s health and vitality.